


it comes and goes in waves

by thewingway



Category: Iron Fist (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Character Study-ish, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 01, Trauma, colleen didn't deserve to have her trauma ignored so here i am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-28 21:42:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20432894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewingway/pseuds/thewingway
Summary: If she’d had a choice, she doesn’t know how it would’ve gone. Maybe different, maybe the same, or maybe this was the inevitable outcome no matter what choices she made. Traveling on a connected path towards each other until the end, an end that demanded one of them die.Colleen won. She isn’t sure if that’s a good thing.(post-defenders)





	it comes and goes in waves

**Author's Note:**

> It's no secret at all that the situation Colleen was raised in with Bakuto and the Hand was manipulation and abuse, it's clear through the seasons. The fallout and trauma of this was largely ignored though, and I wanted to fix that a bit because I have a lot of thoughts. Because you don't go through something like that and come out perfectly okay. This is definitely Colleen centric and borderline character study because I got carried away. 
> 
> Set a little at the very end of and post-Defenders. 
> 
> Title is from Deep Water by American Authors - a very Colleen song.

Danny has asked her before in passing - about her childhood, where she grew up, curious about what she’d been like before he’d known her. Colleen never tells him, she doesn’t think that _ she _ even knows anymore, the words caught in her throat whenever she tries. Memories that had once felt harmless, innocent, now dig their claws into her mind, _ was it really like that? _, perspective shifting as the revelation sinks into her like an anchor and slowly drowns her. 

_ Was any of it like I thought? _

_ Shock _ . Things drifting in slowly beneath the piercing wail of the sirens and the ringing in her ears from the explosion. The dust is still settling, the ground shaking as pieces of the building shift and send a tremor through her bones, smoke filling her lungs with each breath. There’s blood soaking her back and a pain too familiar aching in her chest, realizing that _ his _ blood is all over her shirt and on her hands. Red, sticky, thick. _ Congratulations on your first kill, Colleen _. 

_ I don’t need you anymore _. 

Sticky, red, tainted hands. It feels like the blood is spreading, sinking into her skin, her soul. It’s this thought that urges her to pull away from Danny, from the comfort of his steadying embrace to stand alone a few feet away while she tries to breathe. 

_ She's in shock _ , the paramedic says, but the words aren't for her. _ What happened? _ She can't answer - neither can he. He doesn't know. He _ doesn’t know _. 

_ I killed a cult leader. I killed a murderer. I killed my sensei. _

_ I killed the only father I've ever really had. _

She can't breathe, coughing as more smoke drifts their way and clogs her lungs, wishing she could get the taste of ash and coppery blood out of her mouth. She has to breathe - doesn't want to go with the paramedic that's at her side now gently asking questions, so she steps back, her whole body aching. Danny reaches out for her but she takes another step back to dodge him. It’s too much, all at once, her ears still ringing. 

She refuses treatment, and the paramedic backs off. When Danny presses, she manages to say _ “later” _, though the word doesn’t sound like it came from her. 

_ Shock _ , she hears the paramedic say again, speaking to Danny. _ She really should come to the hospital _. 

_ She won’t _, Danny says, soft, she sees him look over at her again. The emotion in his eyes makes her want to disappear. 

_ “If we kill him, we’re no better than him.” _ Colleen remembers the words, _ her words _ , but it feels like so long ago, spoken by someone that’s no longer her. If there’s anything she learned from Bakuto, it’s how to _ hurt _. 

Fingers against her wrist, startling her as she looks from the rubble and fire of the building to look over at Danny. “We’re getting a ride back to the precinct,” he says, voice nearly lost in the sound of the sirens. “To regroup, check up on everyone. Come on,” he encourages, pulling lightly at her wrist. She follows him and lets him place his hand on the small of her back to guide her through the crowd of emergency personnel as she tries to pretend that the contact doesn’t make her flinch. The back seat of the police car feels like it’s closing down around her, like there’s not enough air. 

The ride passes in a blur of tangled thoughts and nausea rapidly building in her stomach. Her hand is pressed against the seat next to her with Danny’s hand covering it, and he never pulls away. She never tries to. When they arrive at the precinct they immediately head up after the others to where everyone else is awaiting news, a flurry of hugs and reassurances and silent, horrified looks of realization when it’s clear that one is missing. 

When Danny wraps an arm around her shoulders and tucks her against his side she doesn’t protest even if the action makes her feel stifled. She just leans into him a little as the nausea builds up in her stomach with each breath. They’re all talking but she doesn’t really hear the words, still too focused on the feeling of blood and dirt on her hands. 

She’s _ hurt _ before, fought strangers in cages. This is different though. She _ knew _ Bakuto, and the twisted up feelings of resentment and fear and somewhere, still, _ caring _ , make the nausea worse. This wasn’t just hurting, this was _ permanent _, her surrogate father headless and buried under tons of rubble. 

_ I’m going to throw up _ , she thinks, hugging her arms around her stomach. Blood, _ wet _ , against her arms, and she realizes that half the pain in her abdomen is from tearing the stitches Claire had done just hours earlier. Lightheaded, the world is spinning a little as she pulls away from Danny to find a bathroom. It feels like everything is pressing in around her, suffocating, as she looks down at the red spreading slowly across the former-white jacket. She’s _ cold _, and can’t seem to warm up even in the heated building. 

She barely makes it into the cold bathroom before throwing up in the sink, gripping the edges as her body is wracked with coughs. Running on nothing for the past day means it’s mostly bile burning in her throat as she tries to breathe again, spitting into the sink. Heavy footsteps on the tile, a warm hand against the back of her neck, gathering her hair and pulling it away from her face as she dry heaves again. Every muscle in her body feels hyper-tense as she turns the water on and rinses out her mouth before coughing again. 

Her knees feel weak from the combination of blood loss and fading adrenaline and _ shock _ , _ “she’s in shock”. _ Danny pulls her against his chest and she finds the strength to wind her arms around his waist to hold herself up. He smells like sweat and ash and old blood. 

“I’m taking you to the hospital,” he insists, and she doesn’t protest this time. She doesn’t have the energy. “Colleen, what happened in there?”

She shakes her head against his chest. _ Not yet. Not yet _ . Blood on her hands, her blade, an exhale like she’s been punched as his body falls to the floor. Claire, yelling for help as Misty bleeds out on the floor behind her. _ myfaultmyfaultmyfault _

He helps her out of the bathroom, the nausea mostly abating. They pass the main room again, questions of _ “is she okay? Where are you going?” _ hitting her ears, but she doesn’t look at them. Danny answers quickly as they walk, arm around her waist both protective and probably the only thing keeping her on her feet as he talks an officer into driving them to the hospital.

As soon as they step outside the pervasive cold burrowing into her becomes unbearable and her teeth chatter as they walk towards the car. As soon as they’re inside Danny is shedding his heavy coat and draping it around her shoulders, helping her slide her arms in and surrounding her further in the scent of ash. 

They’re in the hospital and it’s overwhelming - white walls and nurses hovering around her and the sound of voices over the intercom blurring in her ears. They pull her away from Danny and get her laid down on a bed, asking her questions that she can’t answer, can’t find the words for. _ “What happened? What happened? Can you hear me?” _

_ “She’s in shock.” _

She closes her eyes. 

\-----

It’s light when she opens her eyes to a white ceiling, hints of sunlight dappling along the walls. Her whole body feels stiff, a bone-deep ache numbed down in a way that makes her head feel foggy. There’s a heavy weight over her from the small pile of extra blankets draped over her. 

Her hands are no longer covered in blood. 

The machines hum a steady rhythm next to the bed, the soft beeping tracking her heartbeat accompanied by the sound of the oxygen as she takes a deep breath through the nasal cannula. As she starts to wake up and become more aware, she realizes that she’s alone. There’s bandaging a little too tight around her abdomen, itching against her skin, and she can feel the lump of more along her shoulder blades. There’s bruising around her wrists - clearly from hands. 

There’s warmth in her body again, but a hollowness in her chest. Images of blood and the light glinting off of her sword, of smoke and ash and a fear building in her chest like she hadn’t felt many times in her life before. In a dark basement, a rainy night, an alley - always because of Bakuto, in some way. She swallows back the bile in her throat and shifts uncomfortably on the bed, wondering what time it is, hell, what _ day _, or where anyone is. 

She doesn’t have to wait long - soon enough the door is being pushed open, Danny peeking around the edge before he notices that she’s awake and steps fully into the room. It’s clearly been a few hours at _ least _, he’s changed clothes and isn’t coated in dirt and ash and blood anymore. He offers a tired smile as he crosses the distance to the bed, reaching out for her hand and taking it when she lifts it to meet his. He fiddles gently with her fingers a little, brushing his thumb along the bruising on her wrist before lifting it up to place a kiss over the darkest spot, right over her pulse point. Something stirs in her chest - something aching, something loving. 

“How are you feeling?” He asks, lips still against her wrist as he speaks before he lowers her hand, but doesn’t release her. 

“Better, mostly.” She shuts her eyes. “Numb.”

The bed dips as he sits down next to her legs, his free hand resting over her stomach with just enough pressure to be comforting without hurting. “What happened in there, Colleen? I haven’t had time to talk to Claire.” 

_ The sickening sound of his body hitting the floor. Blood dripping off the tip of her katana as she lowered it, frozen for a beat before Claire’s voice draws her out of it. Pure adrenaline and panic pushing her into movement. _

Leaving the body of her sensei, her surrogate father (_ her abuser _) behind. 

“Bakuto is dead.” The words are soft and barely there, spoken like a secret into the quiet of the hospital room. “I killed him.” It’s a dangerous sort of truth, and she nearly chokes on the words. 

“Oh, Colleen,” he says, words soft on an exhale as he tightens his hold on her hand and reaches up to cup her face. She’s tired, so _ tired _ , and she leans into the contact without even thinking about it, desperate to feel something _ kind _. “Are you okay?” 

There isn’t any answer for that question that isn’t a lie, so she stays silent, meeting his eyes and hoping to convey even the most fleeting fraction of how she feels through the look alone. He understands, has always had this uncanny way of doing that - he looks both sad and concerned and hurting _ for _ her as he strokes his thumb across her cheek.

“He was going to kill them.” Her throat feels tight, like someone is slowly, slowly squeezing. “Claire, and Misty. She - he cut her arm off. I didn’t have a _ choice _.” 

If she’d had a choice, she doesn’t know how it would’ve gone. Maybe different, maybe the same, or maybe this was the inevitable outcome no matter what choices she made. Traveling on a connected path towards each other until the end, an end that demanded one of them die. Only by the hands of the other. 

She _ won _. She isn’t sure if that’s a good thing. 

“You did the right thing. If it weren’t for you, Misty _ and _ Claire would be dead.” He pauses, hand moving back to its former position across her stomach. “I know that couldn’t have been easy, but you did the right thing.” 

“Hard to think about it like that right now,” she says, followed by a cough that makes her whole body ache as she shuts her eyes. “How’s Misty doing?” She doesn’t want to talk about Bakuto anymore. 

“She was in surgery for a long time, but last I heard, she was stabilized and no longer in critical condition. She’s in the ICU being monitored, but they seem confident that she’s going to pull through.” He pauses. “They said if you hadn’t gotten her out, she wouldn’t have made it.” 

Colleen can’t suppress the slight, bitter laugh laced with self loathing. “_ I’m _ the reason she was injured in the first place. No one should be thanking me.” Bakuto had come for _ her _, it was her fault the others had ended up in the crossfire of a fight that wasn’t meant for anyone but her. 

“Doesn’t change the facts.” 

She shakes her head a little as she looks at their entwined hands, changes the topic quickly. “Have you slept at all?” 

“Haven’t had a moment to. People have been wanting answers, I barely had time to grab a shower and a change of clothes. I just got back to the hospital.” 

“You should go home and get some sleep,” she urges, squeezing his hand. She can’t tell if the momentary desire to be alone is genuine hers or some self-sabotaging guilt trying to rob her of the comfort he brings to the room like a breath of fresh air. 

“That chair over there looks comfortable enough, I’ll stay here,” he replies, inclining his head towards the small plastic chair shoved into the corner. She raises an eyebrow, wondering for a moment if he’s joking, but one look at his face makes it clear that he’s dead serious. 

“Get up.” It’s an order, made weak from her partially-hoarse voice, but he complies without question. She lets go of his hand and takes a deep breath, bracing herself before carefully shifting over on the bed to make room for him. It hurts, a deep, penetrating pain in her back making her tighten her jaw before she settles again enough to speak. “Get on the bed.”

“Colleen, no, you- you’re _ hurt _.” He looks alarmed, concerned by the fact that she’s even moving at all.

“I’m not asking again.” She feels almost the complete opposite of before - before she didn’t want anyone touching her, felt suffocated by his hand on hers or his arm around her. Now she feels a clingy, needy desire to have him as close as possible. It wasn’t even twenty-four hours ago that he was kidnapped by the enemy, _ dead _, as far as she knew. It’s all catching up to her and she just wants to feel him next to her, alive. 

He relents, shedding his coat and tossing it onto the small chair before taking his shoes off and carefully climbing onto the bed next to her. He lays back, his arm sliding around behind her neck as she tucks her head against his chest and shuts her eyes. The steady _ thump-thump _ of his heartbeat is loud in her ears. 

_ You’re alive. He’s alive. It’s okay _. Somehow, they’re not comforting thoughts. 

\-----

The days both dragging and pass in a blink, heavy with the weight of what had gone down. It’s several weeks after Midland Circle when it finally all hits her. For so long now, _ months _ , she and Danny had been tracking the Hand all across the world, only to be thrown into hell when they arrived back in New York. During all of that she’d had something to put one hundred perfect of her focus into, _ herself _ into, something to use like a wall to hold everything else back. 

Now that everything is calm, it finally occurs to her. 

She’s _ safe _. 

Colleen had felt like she’s fading, even long before Danny had entered her life and thrown everything off its axis. Losing pieces of herself, her control, becoming someone she wasn’t proud of being. Fighting strangers in cages just for the money, dishonoring herself and her code every time she stepped into the ring and gave away another piece of her soul. She lost the passion that had driven her for so long, felt it bleeding out of her with every damning decision she made. 

For the past _ year _ she’s been running on empty, running in survival mode. On the run around the world, escalating feelings of exhaustion and tension weighing her down, while determined to ignore everything that had happened with Bakuto. Really, it had been _ easy _ then, with so much else going on, so much to focus on as they traveled the world in search of answers. 

Now? Now Bakuto is dead - and this time he isn’t coming back. She had Danny, too, an anchor at her side in all of it. And these are all _ good things _. 

It makes her feel stupid and _ wrong _for falling apart about all of it now. 

In the weeks that have passed her injuries have been healing well and she’s been feeling better, and so has Danny. There’s been a sense of stability to her life that she hasn’t had in a long time, _ peace _, and it’s the moment she realizes this when it all hits her. 

It’s _ over _. 

_ It’s over _ \- and her life feels directionless without it, without the Hand lingering around the corner, without _ his _ presence. She lost everything that had made up her life, not that there was much to lose, or anything good in it to hold onto. And somehow, still - she finds herself wanting to cling to the jagged pieces for dear life, just for the familiarity it brings along with the pain. Curled up on her side in the middle of the quiet night, Danny asleep behind her, it sends a shiver through her body as she thinks about it. 

Her foundation, her teaching, her father figure, her _ family _ \- all ripped away from her, leaving bleeding wounds that she’s ignored. 

It’s a sharp, twisting sensation in her chest and a hollow ache in her stomach. She feels disgusted with herself for feeling this way, for holding on, for feeling _ loss _ when everything she lost isn’t even what she thought it to be. It’s a war inside her head trying to reconcile her memories as she knew them with what she knows _ now _ , a voice in the back of her head that shakes her. _ Abuse, a cult, you grew up in a goddamn cult _, tightening her hands into fists, exhaling a trembling breath. 

Now things make more sense, or _ less _ sense - things Bakuto said that she realizes now were threats, little pieces of her life falling into place with new context, seen through the lens of an outside perspective. It hurts, _ hurts _, because she loved him - she can’t deny that, even though now the thought makes her skin crawl. She hadn’t wanted to go with him, but he’d taken her in and shown her kindness and comfort that had never existed from her father, and her young impressionable mind attached to him on an unhealthy level. That part is clear now - that it was unhealthy, whatever their twisted in father-daughter, sensei-trainee relationship had been. 

Danny would tell her that in a heartbeat. Claire would tell her over and over until it settles in her head. But it _ won’t _. Because the Bakuto she knew, the one who would encourage her and hug her and gave her a family doesn’t fit into the picture with the Bakuto who tried to kill her, who abused her. 

_ He was using you _ \- that’s what Danny had told her. A piece on the board that, once no longer useful, had to go away. The reality that she was _ nothing _ to Bakuto except an agenda makes her nauseous as she shuts her eyes, trying to blink back tears as that reality hits like a punch to the chest. 

_ Why does no one ever want me? _ She thinks that’s the hardest part of it to accept. Everyone she’s loved has left or abandoned her, through death or through the conscious choice that they didn’t want her. Bakuto was there the longest, through her childhood and teenage years, into her adulthood. She’s only twenty-four, and _ most _ of that time was spent with him. 

And he tried to kill her. 

_ Maybe he should’ve _. 

_ Before _ \- before he tried to kill her, before Danny knew the truth, she remembers Bakuto pulling her aside one night to talk to her in the quiet of his dimly-lit office. She’d felt exposed, picked apart under his gaze, nervous being questioned the way she was. Yet he made her feel like he was justified in everything he was saying. Everything he was excusing. Particularly, her relationship with Danny. 

_ “On one lonely night you invited him into your bed, and it seems your _ … attachment _ has become very strong. I am no longer certain where your loyalties lie, Colleen.” _

Bakuto was right, in a way. It was a lonely night and she was hurting, so was he, but she’s never regretted it or regretted the direction their relationship has gone. Really, that’s all that’s left now. But the way _ he _ said it made her uncomfortable, nerves crawling under her skin as he picked into something so _ personal _, something that a part of her knew he had no right to do. 

_ On one lonely night- _

Cautiously, she extracts herself from the blankets and eases off of the bed, pausing only to make sure Danny hasn’t woken before she pads across the room and slips through the barely-open door into the dojo. Lit faintly only by the streetlights outside it looks abandoned, haunted by the ghost of her former self that makes her feel so entirely out of place as she steps onto the once-familiar mats. 

_ You don’t belong here anymore _, she tells herself, a tightness in her chest as she settles down onto the floor, resting on her legs as she shivers from the cold. 

There’s dust gathering on the equipment that’s been pushed off to the side and along the far edges of the mats, the disuse more and more obvious with each passing day. This was once her livelihood, her purpose, her passion - it’s none of those things anymore. Now it’s tainted. Now _ she _ is. 

_ What’s the one common factor in all of the relationships that have gone wrong? _

A part of her is still waiting with bated breath for him to leave. She’s the only constant in every relationship that’s gone wrong, in every reason for people leaving her - the only part of the equation that can take the fault, and surely, it’ll be no different with Danny. She lied to him even as she fell in love with him, took his anger and let it burn her when he found out, knowing she deserved it. Their relationship had almost been lost to her lies. 

Yet - he’s still here, just in the other room, sleeping soundly. Easing closer and closer to having been there for a year, though it seems like it’s been so much longer, with everything they’ve gone through together. That traitorous part of her, the part she’s pushed down and locked away as deep as she could bury it, wants to _ hope _. 

Hope that _ maybe this is a forever thing _. 

Even now, she’s afraid to. 

\-----

Colleen feels like a ghost inhabiting the apartment, the dojo, someone that once belonged there but no longer does. Staying out of the dojo helps ease the feeling of displacement, but it’s always there, even as another week slips by in a haze of self-doubt as she slides further and further. She’s nothing that a mess in her head now, like a broken thing that Bakuto left behind. Hurting her even from beyond a grave of concrete and steel. 

Danny has started going out at night - driven by a restlessness and a guilt that she knows she can’t alleviate, pushed into action by a dying man’s words. 

Most nights she goes to bed before he’s home, sometimes sleeps or lays awake until he gets back. Sometimes there’s blood on his clothes, sometimes not - she never asks. She doesn’t really want to know. Usually he slides into bed behind her, tentative as he shifts up against her back and wraps an arm around her middle to hug her as if that makes everything okay. 

She hangs up her katana, something that no longer feels like _ hers _ despite the crest it bears, something else poisoned that she can no longer bring herself to touch. It starts to gather dust. 

She’s lost weight, starting since they were traveling but mostly since the events of Midland Circle. Danny comments on it while half-asleep one night, hand running across her side, her ribs, too prominent under his touch. It makes her feel like she’s falling apart, hardly the strong picture of physical health she used to be, though this thought doesn’t motivate her to eat more. 

Drifting listlessly through each day, unmoored. 

She’s lost. 

Danny, so occupied with his own demons, doesn’t entirely notice. She doesn’t blame him - a part of her doesn’t want him to see. 

Sometimes she leaves to go visit Misty, to make sure she’s doing okay, but it’s an action motivated more by guilt than anything. Except for that, she stays mostly in the apartment. At all costs she avoids talking to Claire, as much as she can, because she knows that Claire would take one look at her (_ and _ Danny) and tell them they need help. 

(Claire wouldn’t be wrong - she just doesn’t want to face that)

_ “You two need some serious psychological help” _ \- if only she’d known that it would only get _ worse _. 

It’s late, _ late _, and she can’t sleep. She startles at the sound of the door opening only to settle as she realizes that it’s Danny. He knows she’s awake, greets her as soon as he’s in the room, but she can’t find the words to respond so she just shifts a little in the bed, staring across at the window where the curtains are pulled shut. She listens to the rustling as he finds a change of clothes, the sound of the shower turning on. The apartment is lit dimly only by the light from under the bathroom door and the smallest lamp he’d turned on. 

He smells like shampoo and aftershave when he finally gets into bed behind her, mattress shifting and blankets rustling as he settles. For a moment he wraps an arm around her in a hug before he releases her and turns over, taking the warmth with him, and she tries to suppress the shiver that rolls down her spine. 

As his breaths become steady, rhythmic, she finds herself matching her own to him as she seeks that same peace. That familiar heaviness pulls her further and further down, the world slipping away, narrowed down to just the space of their bed and his comforting presence behind her. 

Later, she wakes in tears. Her pulse is fast, hummingbird heart in her chest as she fights for air momentarily before the world seems to crash back into her all at once. Everything feels heavy, a sticky-feeling to her skin and a vice around her throat that makes her want to disappear. The memories of the nightmare linger just out of reach, only the way it’s making her feel having a lasting impression as she wakes. Her hands shake as she wipes at her face, frustrated by the tears and trapped by the heaviness of the blankets as she pushes at them as if that’ll help. 

She forgets that Danny is next to her until he catches her hand in both of his, sitting up, gently tugging her hand and placing her palm against his chest to feel his heartbeat as he makes a soft shushing noise. In a moment of what she perceives more as weakness than anything, she nearly collapses towards him until her head is against his chest, letting him support her as she feels like falling. His arms are around her immediately and she takes a shaky breath as she holds her palm still against his chest, trying to focus on his heartbeat. 

His skin is warm against her, he’s always so warm, as she sniffs a little and shifts on the bed until she’s surrounded by him. 

“Talk to me,” he encourages, softly, and she stills. What is there to tell him? She can hardly make sense of all of it herself, let alone give voice to it. The feeling of the nightmare lingers in her head and she feels trapped, something tightening around her throat with every breath. 

“You’re not okay. You haven’t been for a while.” 

It’s a panic feeling that crawls through her body like an unwelcome invader as he talks, that self-defense action of burying everything so deep that no one can see it rising up as she pushes back away from him. 

She opens her mouth to protest but he quickly cuts her off. “Give me a little credit, Colleen. I know I’ve been preoccupied, but I’m not blind. I’ve _ noticed _ .” He grabs her hand again, keeps it pressed to his chest, his heart beating strong beneath the black dragon mark. “Now you’re waking up in tears. Just talk to me, okay? And _ breathe _.” 

The aching sense of _ loss _ has been building into an unbearable pressure in her chest, fueled by self-resentment for the fact that she feels any of that at all. It makes it hard to breathe, to focus. She’s so _ tired _. Her head feels heavy and achy from crying as she wipes at her face again with her free hand, looking away from Danny as she takes a steadying breath. 

He’s _ right _ , of course he is, but she’s been burying everything for so long now that she isn’t sure how to tell him anything. How _ do _ you bare your soul to someone? It takes trust, she thinks, a near absence of fear - and she is _ afraid _. 

There’s a scar across her stomach, one across her back. Physical reminders of _ him _, of the history she can never shed, tying her to them with an inevitable permanence. It makes her sick. That’s what trust got her - scars and psychological damage and manipulation, never love with any sort of purity. 

When she looks back at Danny, though, that’s what she sees - the purest sense of love, a deep devotion like she hasn’t seen in a long time, directed only at her. It makes her think, makes her realize things that she’s buried for so long now. _ I don’t want to stay afraid _. 

“I’m just so _ tired _,” she admits, letting him pull her back towards him as all of the fight drains out of her. He shifts, holding her against him, until they’re laying down again face to face. It’s hard to look into his eyes even in the barely-there light, his gaze so earnest that it feels like she’s been stripped of every one of her defenses, heart and soul exposed to him. She hopes, so desperately, that he will treat them kindly. 

“Was it a nightmare that woke you up?” She nods, and he holds her hand tighter. “About what?” 

“I’m not sure. _ Him _, I think - Bakuto.” The sort of all-encompassing fear sinking into her still is the one she associates with him. “I don’t know what to do now. Without him, without the Hand.” The words feel gross even to her as she speaks, and she shuts her eyes to avoid his gaze as a bile rises in her throat. 

“That’s- that’s normal, I think. It’s not easy having your world pulled out from under you, and you don’t have to act like it is,” he points out, soft, but she still can’t look at him even as he brushes her hair away from her face. 

“For… a long time now, before I even met you, I feel like I’ve had an anchor on me pulling me a little further down into the deep every day, and I think I ran out of air a long time ago.” The admission slips from her and fills the silence, a heaviness settling on her chest as she says it. _ This isn’t new _ , she thinks, _ I’ve been on a downward path for much longer than this _. 

“Come here,” he insists, his tone so soft, pulling her closer to him. This time she doesn’t protest as she lets him hold her against his chest, wrapping her arm over him as he kisses the top of her head and rubs her back gently. 

“I hate that I feel this. _ Hate it _ . He doesn’t deserve anything, least of all me feeling _ loss _ over him.” It’s an ugly feeling, that hatred turned in on herself, the logic all twisted around in her head until she’s made herself out to be her own enemy in this situation. The logic against her heart, emotions. 

There’s a hint of pity in his eyes when she looks at him and it makes her sick. She doesn’t want him looking at her like she’s a victim, though a logical part of her knows the term isn’t inaccurate. _ Abuse _ \- that’s what it was, that’s what she went through. Just another victim of abuse who barely escaped, drowning now under the weight of it all. 

“You know, Colleen, I honestly don’t think there’s any… prerequisite or _ right _ way for handling this situation, for dealing with the fallout from it. Whatever you’re feeling isn’t wrong, or invalid, in any sort of way.” He pulls back a little so she _ has _ to look at him. “You’re so strong. It’s something I realized about you early on, and that hasn’t changed now. You’ve been to hell and back and you’re still here.” 

“Doesn’t feel like it, sometimes,” she admits. “I want to feel okay. I want to feel like this was a good thing. I lost a lot, but all… all _ bad _ things. I have you now, I have a future ahead of me that has the potential to be so much better. It just _ hurts _.” 

“I understand that you haven’t had the best situation with _ family _ , and Bakuto was the one who was there the longest for you. Horrible person or not, that’s still an absence now. You’re allowed to feel that, you’re allowed to _ hurt _ .” It makes more sense when he says it. Maybe because he isn’t _ as _ close to the situation, or their similar experiences, but his words send another crack through her walls. 

“In K’un Lun, they weren’t exactly _ fond _ of showing emotions, especially anything that could be perceived as weakness. They’re wrong though - sometimes the bravest thing you can do is cry. That’s how you start to heal.” His words are tender and hit a little too close to home. She’s spent so long letting everything build up, drowning her, that she can’t remember _ how _ to let herself break down. 

He trails his fingers along her cheek gently, looking at her with so much love, and that’s what finally tips her over the edge. She’s drawn in by some sort of gravity to lay against him as she muffles a sob against his chest, the pent-up emotional pressure in her chest aching as she gives in and cries. His arms are grounding in their warmth and the security they offer as she lets herself fall apart, lets herself grieve. For what she lost, good or not, for the foundation that’s fallen apart from underneath her. 

It’s a while, she thinks, before she feels like she can breathe again and before the tears stop. Danny rubs her back again before pulling away for a moment, wordlessly offering tissues as he climbs back into bed next to her. She wipes at her eyes and sniffs a little, squeezing his hand a little weakly as he smiles a little at her. 

“I love you,” he insists, drawing the slightest smile out of her before she wipes at her eyes again and sits up a little more. She’s empty, drained of all of that pressure and she feels a bit worn down. A bit lighter. 

“Unless you want to try and sleep again, I have a suggestion.” 

“Which would be?” She asks. 

“The best kind of comfort - some of that hot chocolate you have buried at the back of your cabinet, and we can pick a movie to watch.” He smiles when he sees her nod, already pushing up out of the bed to go dig out the hot chocolate mix that she’d forgotten was even there.

He comes back several minutes later with two mugs of hot chocolate, a glass of water, and an aspirin that she gratefully takes. He pulls her against his shoulder with an arm wrapped around her, kissing the side of her head, and when she pulls away she sees that pure sort of love in his eyes again. 

For the first time in a long time, the air in her lungs feels freeing.

**Author's Note:**

> I have!! A lot of thoughts!! About the Colleen and Bakuto storyline!!


End file.
